


give, but give until it hurts

by merrywil



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cloak of Levitation (Marvel), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 21:51:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18979042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrywil/pseuds/merrywil
Summary: When the Time Stone was destroyed, Stephen Strange thought he would never again have to carry the burden of seeing another’s future.  Unfortunately, he was wrong.  Now he has some old lessons to revisit, and a new one to learn.“If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.”– Chinese Proverb





	give, but give until it hurts

The first time it happens, Stephen’s standing in the living room of a New York tenement.  He’s just evicted a particularly troublesome soul-leech that had been feeding on the residents of the tiny walk-up.  He’s following up with a quick cleansing-slash-warding. The family can only see the faded rust-colored carpets and framed photos and ancient refrigerator humming in the background.  No need to tell them about the residual psychic detritus left by their intruder, and visible to anyone with a third eye.

He smiles awkwardly at the effusive thanks from the family, although he accepts the bread and preserves that the elderly grandmother pushes into his hands.  Hey, a sorcerer has to eat, and rice and vegetables get a little boring after a while. The Sanctum doesn’t let them starve, but it doesn’t have the best food budget.

Then he feels something roll to a stop against his shoe.  The little girl (he’s terrible with kids’ ages; maybe five or six?) stands shyly at a distance, hands behind her back and toe scuffing the floor.  She seems too nervous to venture any closer, so he takes pity and hands her the brightly colored ball.

When their hands meet, the most fleeting brush, he reels.  A kaleidoscope of images flash before his eyes. A hospital room, flowers and a stuffed bear, the blare of alarms, the rush of feet, silence.  He could almost pass it off as a memory, if not for the fact that the rooms and colors are entirely wrong for his old workplace.

He realizes he’s staring, his outstretched hand still frozen in air.

“Señor, are you alright?”  The mother is looking at him in concern, her own hand reaching towards him.  He shakes his head minutely, images still fading like the afterimage of the sun.

“Yes.  Just checking.  You shouldn’t have any problems now, but you know where to find me if you do.”

He mulls over the oddity of it all on the walk back to the Sanctum.  Normally, he would have opened a portal, but the damp November air helps clear his head.  Had it been an aftershock of the ritual he’d performed? Something else?

A car horn blares, and Stephen jumps (into a freezing puddle, great) to avoid a swerving taxi.  Maybe he should have known better by now, but there are so many things to do and recall, that the seconds of not-quite deja vu slip easily into memory.

\--

The second time, it’s in the middle of yet-another monster-of-the-week episode.  Usually Stephen leaves these to the Avengers and their like, but sometimes the mystic arts get called on to play a supporting role.  In this case, it’s because the giant, neon green cow-slash-jellyfish really needs to be returned to its own dimension instead of grazing on exhaust fumes from New York traffic.

“Just hold it still for one second, so I can lower the portal over it...”  That doesn’t happen, and the next moment Stephen’s blinking the stars away from his vision.  The Avengers are trying to wrestle the creature back under control, one of its appendages waving wildly.  Being batted out of the sky and into a storefront is definitely not a job perk.

“Doc!  You okay?”  Stephen nods, and lets Sam Wilson pull him to his feet, the Cloak helping.  Again the flood of images catches him by surprise. Stars, streaming past the windshield of a spaceship?  And the sounds of a street bazaar, a flash of red light, the creak of metal and darkness and the screaming.  He sways, and the other man steadies him.

“Hey, if you need to sit this out, we can figure out a way to handle Audrey over there.”  Stephen is already shaking his head, carefully.

“No, I’m fine.  And unless you know how to open interdimensional portals, she’s not going to be that easy to ‘handle.’”

Wilson looks skeptical, but acquiesces.  “If you’re sure your brain’s not scrambled, then we could use the help.  Parker,” he calls into the coms. “Come help hold it steady. Let’s try this again, folks.”

\--

Eventually, the ball drops; it always does.  Wong has come back from the monthly meeting they’ve set up with the Avengers, and some other watch groups.  He’s not in a particularly good mood, which is typical when either of them have to take a turn representing the mystic arts.  Mind-numbingly boring would be a nice way of describing such bureaucracy. On a good day.

Stephen’s paying attention only in passing, most of his focus on an especially tricky translation from the grimoire he’s holding.  But then Wong says something that makes him look up.

“Wait.  Say that again.  Captain America was...kidnapped by aliens?”  Wong harrumphs grumpily.

“Yes.  Apparently the Avengers sent several fighters to support the Guardians on a mission.  While seeking their target on a planet, they were ambushed. Wilson was taken captive, and imprisoned on a slave ship.  Fortunately, he was later rescued.”

Stephen feels his stomach drop.  “That’s not possible.”

Wong frowns.  “Why is it not possible?  Where are you going?”

Stephen snaps the grimoire closed; sensing the change in his focus, the Cloak comes flying across the room, and settles around his shoulders.  “I need to go see Wilson. I have a terrible feeling that I somehow saw the future. And that shouldn’t be possible. Because the Time Stone was destroyed.”

\--

Sam Wilson looks little the worse for wear.  The scrapes and bruises seem to lend themselves to a slightly rakish air, as if being kidnapped by space slavers and possibly nearly dying is the next in thing.  Stephen doesn’t have time to contemplate what the Avengers think of him, portalling in like a bat out of hell and demanding to speak with Captain America.

But he has his information.  Yes, Wilson went into space. Yes, he was visiting an alien planet, helping the Guardians gather information about the slavers, when he stumbled across the traffickers themselves.  One shot from a crazy alien ray gun, and next thing he knew he was waking up in the hold of the slavers’ ship.

Fortunately, all’s well that ends well.  For Wilson, at least. But now Stephen knows that somehow, he did see the future.  What he doesn’t know is whether that was the first time.

It’s easy enough for him to remember the tenement building.  He spins open a portal into a corner of the hallway outside the tiny apartment.  The muted sounds of a neighbor’s television mix with the traffic noises drifting in through an open window at the end of the corridor.  He knocks on the apartment door.

The elderly grandmother answers it.  Now that he’s here, he’s temporarily at a loss for words.  She gazes into his face for a long moment, and then silently steps aside to welcome him in.

The family’s mother is seated in a chair at the small kitchen table, looking out another open window.  The warm sun of a early summer afternoon casts bright bars across the linoleum table top. She turns, and smiles up at him.  Her smile is sad, and his heart clenches.

“Please, sit, Señor.  I had a feeling you might know, and come back.”

He feels like the walk across the tiny kitchen is the walk to an executioner’s block.  The Cloak, perhaps sensing something is amiss, tightens almost imperceptibly around his shoulders.  He sits, and looks into the woman’s warm brown eyes.

“Tell me what happened.  Please.”

She looks out the window again, although she is obviously not seeing the city in front of her.  “Amaia was always such a happy child. She never complained. I could have taken her in sooner, but the doctor is so expensive.  And my husband had trouble finding work last winter. They said the cancer spread too quickly, that nothing could have been done.”

Her eyes find his, and they hold only sorrow and compassion despite her next words.  “But I think you know some of this, yes? I saw how you looked at Amaia that night. My mother,” here she nods at the old woman in her rocking chair.  “She told me of the Santero priests of her childhood, and those with the second sight. You have this gift, yes?”

Stephen shakes his head slowly.  He feels completely lost, all of the rules that govern his new universe turned on their heads.  “I saw something, yes. But I didn’t know then what it was.”

The woman stands, stately in her grief in a way that transcends their humble surroundings.  She smiles at him, a benediction. “It’s alright. The Sight is not a gift that can be controlled; it gives, but it cannot be tamed.  If you ever see my Amaia’s spirit in your visions, tell her that we love her.”

\--

He’s not sure how he manages to get out of the home where the little girl once lived.  There are words, and condolences. He stumbles through a portal into the Sanctum’s library, his heart racing and palms clammy.  Wong comes around a shelf of books, and stops in his tracks.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.  What’s wrong?”

Stephen almost laughs hysterically at his friend’s phrasing, but takes a steadying breath instead.  He is an experienced practitioner of the mystic arts, and the Master of a Sanctum. He faced down a Titan wielding four Infinity Stones, for Vishanti’s sake.

And that is what has him terrified.  When he realized that the Time Stone had been destroyed, he had not felt the pangs of failure.  He had felt only relief that he would never again be forced to weigh the future, to play the role of chessmaster in a game where (trillions of) lives were the pawns.

The Ancient One had told him “it’s not about you.”  And she was right, and so he had used an Infinity Stone on a scale that none of the masters before him had done.  But he is only a human being, who has seen more lives than any human was meant to see, and in moments of weakness he longs for peace.

“So.  It turns out that I can see the future.  Is that supposed to happen?”

Wong’s solution for nearly everything is tea (or ice cream, but that isn’t really appropriate here).  Maybe Stephen’s worried the other man a little. Before he can blink, he finds himself ensconced in an armchair with a cup of tea at his elbow.  Wong stands before him, hands on his hips and face serious (well, more serious than usual).

“Tell me.”

\--

So Stephen does.  As both a former doctor and a sorcerer, he knows the devil can be in the details.  He tries to keep his descriptions clinical and detached, although he doesn’t manage to hide the catch in his voice when he tells Wong what became of the little girl.

“Her name was Amaia.  She was six years old.  She liked to roller skate, and her favorite color was purple.  And she’s dead, Wong. She’s dead even though I saw it happen, months ago, and wasn’t able to recognize what I saw!”

He’s breathing heavily again, and he realizes that his hands are shaking so badly that the teacup is audibly rattling in its saucer.  The Cloak gently pries it from him, and returns it to the table.

Centering himself, Stephen continues more calmly.  “How is it even possible for me to have seen what I saw?  I thought the Time Stone and the Eye were the only means of viewing future events, and possible variations of the timeline.”

Wong has been pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back.  He stops, turns, and spins a small portal into what Stephen recognizes as the library at Kamar-Taj.  Extracting a thin, moth-eaten volume, he begins to gently turn its pages, obviously looking for something.  When he finds it, he pauses to read. Then he turns the book towards Stephen.

“In general, you are correct.  The Eye of Agamotto, and the Infinity Stone it contained, were our only means of viewing possible futures.  However, this tool was used only by the Sorcerer Supreme--and foolish novices,” The exasperated but fond tone in the other man’s voice offsets his words.  “Even then, it was employed only sparingly. What you used it for was far beyond what any sorcerer had ever done.”

Stephen averts his gaze, and the Cloak squeezes his shoulders again.  “I felt that there was no other way.”

“And there was not.  But I think there may have been consequences to such use.  In the 12th century, a member of our order wrote a treatise in which he hypothesized that using the Eye on a grand scale would forge a lasting connection between its user and Time.  Although his language is somewhat fanciful, he speaks of an increased sensitivity to the individual life threads that form the skein of our timeline.”

Stephen takes a moment to digest that.  “That...makes sense. As much as anything about the mystic arts makes sense, theoretical physics be damned.  Why does it happen at random though? I can’t control it, like I controlled the Eye.”

Wong shrugs.  “At least not yet.  But perhaps you never will.  The Multiverse sometimes communicates with us in ways we cannot understand.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio?”  Stephen starts to feel the stirrings of anger again. It’s a resentment against his ultimate powerlessness to save people that has plagued him since Titan, like the deep ache in his hands that never goes away.

Now it’s his turn to jump up and start pacing.  “What good does that do? If there were some omnipotent force guiding our way, what possible purpose does it serve to show me a little girl’s death, and then have me fail to save her?  Fail to save...so many others. Unless the fault is entirely mine.”

But Wong is already shaking his head.  “Talk sense, Stephen. How could you have known?  And as to purpose, perhaps you see exactly what you are meant to see.”

“If that’s even the case, then how do I know what I choose is the right path?  If I only see a part of the whole, even with these ‘gifts,’” his anger is gone, replaced by a hopeless bitterness. “Then my choices could make things worse.  Is it better to stand aside, and let the timeline play out without interference?”

Stephen feels the corner of the Cloak gently stroke his cheek, and he realizes that his eyes are swimming with unshed tears.  He blinks them away, and looks up as Wong places a hand on his shoulder.

“Stephen.  You were a physician.  You have held the power of life and death in your hands before this.  Could you withhold your help, and allow someone to die if you had the power to even try and save them?  Even if you knew that your actions carried the potential to hurt, as well as heal? This is no different.  You cannot shape the world to your will, but if you have the chance to help even one person, then that is the best any of us can do.”

\--

The third time it happens, Stephen is in a hospital room.  He’s not sure what to feel, being back in his old haunts. The smell of antiseptic and the sounds of controlled chaos bring a bittersweet mix of nostalgia and regret.  He also feels more than a little out of place in his sorcerer robes.

Christine is with him, just like she used to be.  She’d called him about an unusual case, which it turns out was unusual because of magic instead of medicine.  Right now, he’s standing in a loose circle around the patient’s hospital bed, along with the young man’s mother and older brother.  The man’s sister-in-law and baby nephew watch from the room’s corner. To lift the curse (and who goes around getting cursed nowadays?), the bond of family is one of the strongest sources of energy.

He takes the mother’s hand gently in his own faintly tremoring one, and then places his other hand in the brother’s outstretched palm.  That’s when it hits him, images thundering past like a speeding train. The Cloak is getting better at responding to his fits. He comes back to himself still standing, and a glance at the people beside him reveals they have not noticed anything particularly odd.  Christine is giving him a questioning look from across the room, but she has always been especially observant.

The ritual is fortunately straight forward, and minutes later the room is filled with the sounds of joyous laughter and not a few tears.  That’s his cue to leave, especially because he’ll be able to put off any uncomfortable questions by his former colleague if he sneaks out now.  As he moves towards the door, he brushes past the brother’s wife. She is smiling, and lifting her infant son to look at his embracing father and uncle.

Stephen pauses.  He knows. He’s seen how happiness turns within a few short weeks to sorrow, how an unfortunate accident sends a drunk driver hurtling two tons of metal towards a cyclist on his way home from work.  How the little family is reduced from three to two, and a boy grows up without a father.

He reaches out a hand to the woman.  She starts, not having noticed him, but then smiles.

“Thank you for your help.  How can we ever repay you?”

Stephen shakes his head.  “You owe me nothing. But if you would do me a favor, convince your husband to take the bus to work until the winter comes.  And don’t ask me to explain.”

Her smile flattens into a frown of confusion, but he is out the door and gone.

\--

He tells Wong, of course.  Not right away, but eventually.  His friend can be like a dog with a bone, but Stephen’s pensive mood goes on long enough that he can’t blame Wong for wanting to know its cause.

He thinks Wong may reprimand him for meddling.  But the other man just nods, grips Stephen’s shoulder in a show of solidarity, and goes about his business.

Until two months later.  Stephen portals into the Sanctum’s kitchen after a week of dimension-hopping.  It hadn’t been a terrible trip, in the sense that no one had tried to kill him or eat him alive or possess him.  Well, at least no one had *seriously* tried. But he’s exhausted, and wants nothing more than tea, a bath, and bed, in that order.

Wong walks into the kitchen, as if he expected to find Stephen there.  Which is definitely not possible, except that it’s Wong.

“There you are.  Good. You have a visitor.”

Stephen sighs.  “A visitor? Right now?”

“Yes.  Normally I’d ask them to come back another time, but I think you’ll want to see this one.”

“Alright.”  He’s too tired to argue, so hopefully he can take care of this quickly.  He’s even willing to skip the tea and the bath at this point. “Who is it?”

“Anna Symmachos.  You remember, her brother-in-law was the one with the sleeping curse?”

Stephen feels like the floor has just dropped out from under him.  Clenching his teeth, he gives Wong a terse nod of thanks, and heads towards the sitting room.

His thoughts are in turmoil as he walks down the long corridor.  He hasn’t had any more brushes with the future since that day in the hospital, but he can feel in his bones that it’s just a matter of time (ha, very funny, Strange).  Which leaves the question of whether he did the right thing, by interfering and cautioning Anna against what the future might hold.

The young woman is standing in front of a merrily crackling fire, lit to ward off the first cool fingers of winter.  She turns as he enters, and smiles. Then she’s moving quickly towards him, but the Cloak doesn’t flare in protection.  Stephen blinks in stunned bemusement as she gently takes his hands in hers, and leans forward to kiss him softly on the cheek.

“Doctor.  Your friend said you had just arrived.  But I am glad, because I wanted so much to thank you.”

“Thank me?”

She nods, and leads him to the couch, one of her hands still gently holding his.  They sit, and she gazes into the fire for a moment, seeming to gather her thoughts.

“You told me, that day, to make my Luca ride the bus to work.  It did not make sense to me then. But something told me to trust you, and I did.  He grumbled, but he is a good man.” She laughed. “Then, about two weeks ago, he came in, white as a sheet.  I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he had seen a terrible accident on his ride home. A drunk driver slammed into a street post.”

She stares into Stephen’s eyes.  “And when he said this, I just knew.  That bus follows the same route that he cycles on each day, to and from work.  If he had been on the street that day, that car would have hit him, wouldn’t it?”

Stephen looks away.  “Maybe. The future is not set in stone.  But when I saw you and your little boy, I...did not want to take that chance.”

“And I am grateful that you did not.”  From her pocket, she extracts a small photograph, of a man holding his little son high in the air, his smile as bright as the warm summer sunshine around them.  “I do not count our tomorrows, but I am thankful for every day that my baby has his father. I think that your job might sometimes be lonely, and without thanks.  So I wanted to come, and make sure that you knew you made a difference.”

She kisses his cheek again, and smiles.  Then she is gone, and Stephen sits staring into the fire.  He still has his doubts, many of them. He knows that the outcome of his intervention will not always be so rosy.  He still has the burden of those he did not save, and there are so many of these that he knows he will never be free of that weight.  

But for this moment, he is warmed by the gratitude of a single person whose life he changed for the better.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> So, at some point, I remember reading in an old comic panel where DS had visions of the future, no Eye involved. I was never able to find it again, and possibly hallucinated it ;-) but the idea stuck.


End file.
